Culture is what happens on an ordinary Tuesday

I love a good company tradition.

The team event everyone talks about for weeks. A funny awards presentation. A Slack channel that unexpectedly becomes the place people actually want to be. The little rituals that make work feel less like a calendar full of meetings.

I also think we sometimes give those moments more responsibility than they can carry.

A great event can bring people together.

It can’t make up for months of somebody feeling invisible.

A thoughtful recognition program can make it easier to celebrate people.

It can’t make a manager notice the good work happening right in front of them.

And a values document can describe the company you want to be.

It can’t be the company for you.

The small stuff adds up

People notice who gets thanked in public.

They notice when a new teammate is introduced properly, when someone remembers a milestone, when a manager follows through on something they promised, and when a person from another office is invited into a conversation before the decision is already made.

They also notice when those things don’t happen.

None of these moments is a complete measure of culture on its own. Forgetting one birthday doesn’t automatically mean someone is a bad manager. But patterns matter, especially when the same groups of people keep having a different experience from everyone else.

I think this becomes even more important in distributed companies.

When we don’t share an office, we rely on a smaller set of signals to understand whether we’re included. The public thank you. The one-to-one. The way a decision is communicated. Whether someone makes room for your region’s reality instead of assuming everyone works the same way.

When we brought our Canadian and Mexican teams together, one thing that stood out in our employee feedback was how differently people experienced connection across locations.

We could have responded by adding more events to the calendar. Instead, I brought people together in focus groups to understand what was actually helping them feel connected, and what was getting in the way.

What came back wasn’t a request for bigger celebrations. People talked about small interactions, relationships with colleagues, shared interests, and simply having more chances to get to know each other.

It reminded me that you can’t design belonging entirely from a people team’s calendar. You have to understand what belonging actually feels like to the people you’re trying to bring together.

Programs make good behavior easier. They don’t replace it.

There’s a role for systems here.

A shared calendar can remind leaders about important moments. A recognition tool can give everyone a place to celebrate contributions. A regular forum can help teams see what their colleagues are building.

Those are all useful.

But I think the better question is: what behavior are we trying to make more likely?

If the goal is recognition, then the system should make it easier for people to notice, name, and appreciate the contributions around them.

If the goal is connection, a program should give people a reason to talk and make it easier for those conversations to continue.

If the goal is belonging across countries, shared standards should not erase what makes each team different.

The success of the program isn’t that the calendar says it happened.

It’s that somebody felt the difference.

The most useful culture question

I like asking a simple question when evaluating a people initiative:

“Would someone notice if we stopped doing this?”

Not just whether they’d miss the event or the prize. Would they notice a change in the way they are treated, supported, or connected to their colleagues?

If the answer is no, maybe the program needs a rethink.

If the answer is yes, it might be worth protecting even if it doesn’t look impressive in a quarterly update.

There’s nothing wrong with big company moments. We should absolutely make space for them.

I just don’t want them to distract us from the smaller ones.

A company’s culture is built over hundreds of ordinary Tuesdays, not only the big day everyone took photos of.